Make good use of the first 100 days. Stop falling back on brand. I sat with a CMO a year ago—new at her company, she was a traditional marketer with a heavy focus on branding and new customer acquisition, and her organization was primarily filled with communications, lead-generation and branding people. Meanwhile, the sales team was fist-fighting in the mud to retain control of key accounts; the industry pundits wouldn’t cover them and prospects winced—they said they needed to “find themselves” after five years of steady acquisitions and a pot of un-integrated offers and value propositions. So, this new CMO’s immediate focus on branding, marketing communications and signaling, and lead-capture campaigns was totally misaligned with what her company really needed. What about gathering customer insight, understanding the rate of customer defection and isolating the dials of retention and repurchase, or the implementation value for engineering? Well, that CMO is no longer there.

Be a new-DNA CMO and use those first and precious days—or put away the old and start today with a new 100 days—to build your war stories and get closer to what’s core—meet with 100 customers; be on 100 sales calls; talk to the bloggers making noise in your space; talk to your top- and bottom-earning partners. Otherwise, if you’re new, you won’t know what’s ailing the company. A new logo and a sexy Web site can always come later.

Change the brand equation. When we talk to customers on behalf of our clients, they tell us that there’s a huge disconnect between the brand promise and the realization of that promise. A company we know well has put its head of Marketing (a new-DNA CMO, by the way) over the Services and Support organization. Interesting? The greatest disconnect is when the customer is told something will work a certain way and deliver certain results—and then it works another way and delivers a different set of results. The brand equation is one the customer and the market ultimately calculate. Customer experience, reputation and innovation are truly the new variables.

• It’s all about customer experience. Know that customers are getting great service and that their experiences—at all touch points—are not only positive, but memorable and remarkable.
• Understand your reputation, really! Worry more about what you can’t control by monitoring blogs, boards, user comments, etc., and less about what you can control—image, advertising, communications.
• Master innovation and invention. When you hear these words, you might think “product innovation” but include process innovation, inventing new business models and ways to package customer solutions. The more “innovative” and relevant something is the more people talk about it, the less you need to spend promoting and hyping.

Make fact-based decisions. We have an engagement and approach we built about five years ago called voice of sales. We built it because we were asked to build and re-build customer programs that were completely out of synch with what sales demanded. The voice of sales then became our starting point—it’s a technique that has led to incredible programs like NetApp’s evidence to win. In that case, like others, we were engaged by marketers with the new DNA. The new DNA is often found in someone who has run a business or P&L, is innately entrepreneurial, and un-interested in making strategic and funding decisions based on lore about what people think the sales organization needs. Make decisions based on the facts, and keep your finger on the pulse because it changes constantly.

There are people out there forming it, getting it, doing it, excelling at it. The DNA of the New CMO is really wired to align more with sales, to focus less on brand and creative, and to be smarter and more focused on business fundamentals. Some expect that this new DNA will allow CMOs to live longer in their jobs. As we continue to descend into this New Year, I encourage you to test yourself and your organization for that DNA. If it’s not there, move slowly and steadily in that direction. And in the meantime, use what you learned here to fake it!

Promise Phelon, CEO Founder Promise.Phelon@phelongroup.com